In February I wrote a post about a First World War love token which we have in the collection of the Department of Coins and Medals. The token, a silver shilling of King George V, had been engraved to carry the simple message ‘FROM FRED TO NELLIE FRANCE 1916’. In the post I wondered who Fred and Nellie were. Had Fred fought at the Somme and if so, did he return home?

These questions I raised far more in hope than in the expectation of anyone suggesting possible answers. The rather limited information that we had about the object, that it had been donated to the Museum in 1966 by Miss Carvell from Hampstead in London, was not a particularly promising place from which to start any investigation.

Fred and Nellie Sharp, 5 August 1916. Photo with kind permission of Joy

Imagine my surprise when a few days after the post was published, the Museum received an email from a lady who had seen an image of the token on the Museum’s Facebook page and felt compelled to write. In subsequent emails Joy explained that her grandfather Frederick Sharp, known as Fred, had married a lady called Ellen Alden (who everyone knew as Nellie) on 5 August 1916 at the John Street Baptist Church in Holborn. Frederick Sharp had been called up in 1916 and married Nellie just before he left for France with the King’s Royal Rifle Corps. In a photograph taken on their wedding day you can see the newly married couple, Fred in his army uniform and Nellie seated by his side.

Fred and Nellie with their three children, date unknown. Photo with kind permission of Joy

The King’s Royal Rifle Corps had a total of fourteen battalions engaged at the Battle of the Somme from July 1916 until its end in November that year. So it is possible that Fred did indeed see action in the battle. Thankfully he returned home to be reunited with Nellie and the couple had three children, eventually ending up living in Friern Barnet in North London. Nellie died in 1966, the year the token entered the Museum’s collection as a donation from Miss Margaret Mary Carvell, who lived at 30 Daleham Gardens, Hampstead. Margaret Carvell was evidently interested in coins as she had joined the British Numismatic Society in November 1966 but died just two years later.

So far we haven’t been able to make the link between Margaret Carvell and Fred and Nellie, and maybe we never will. While it’s unlikely we can ever be completely certain that this love token was a gift from Frederick Sharp to his wife Ellen, the evidence kindly put forward by Joy is compelling. I for one hope that the couple shown in the photograph is the one we are seeking and that it was Fred, whom Joy described as ‘a lovely kind man’, who gave the simple token of affection to Nellie before he left to go to war.

From 1977 until 1992 Mozambique, in south-east Africa, fought a civil war which was fuelled by a global power struggle between east and west – the ‘Cold War’. During this period millions of guns were poured into the country via the international arms trade.

Many weapons remained buried or hidden after the war, representing a threat to peace and stability. In 1995 Bishop Dom Dinis Sengulane of the Christian Council of Mozambique set up the Transforming Arms into Tools project, which offered farming equipment and other materials in exchange for guns. Mozambican artists then turned these weapons into sculptures that reflect the collective creativity of the people of Mozambique and their refusal to submit to a culture of violence.

The Mozambique civil war claimed almost one million lives and left five million people displaced. The Throne of Weapons represents both the tragedy of that war and the human triumph of those who achieved a lasting peace. Its anthropomorphic qualities – it has arms, legs, a back and most importantly a face – actually two faces – link it immediately to the arts of Africa, in which non-figurative objects such as chairs, stools, weapons, pots etc are seen and described as human beings.

Although made of guns, the Throne of Weapons harks back to older wooden African stools and thrones used by leaders that showed their prestige, but also their willingness and ability to talk to their fellow men and to the ancestors. The throne is also a contemporary work of art with a global significance, linking the arts of Africa with the Western arts scene, and Mozambique with the global arms trade. None of the guns used were made in Mozambique, or even in Africa, thus it becomes a sculpture in which we are all, one way or another, complicit.

The throne is a war memorial, but it celebrates another kind of courage and another kind of victory. Museums are more and more concerned with portraying intangible as well as tangible heritage as a way of building an emotional bridge with a past inhabited by people rather than by the objects they created, especially when charged with describing traumatic histories of warfare, slavery and the abuse of human rights. The Throne of Weapons allows us to cross that bridge.